IDEAS & TRENDS

IDEAS & TRENDS; The Pope Looks at The Reformation

By GEORGE JOHNSON AND LAURA MANSNERUS

Published: May 10, 1987

In other centuries, and even in this one, the Roman Church referred to Protestant groups as ''heretical conventicles,'' so unyielding was the schism over Rome's authority. A few decades of ecumenicism have cast it in a softer light. Last week the Pope himself visited a center of the Reformation, and he said the movement had brought spiritual renewal to the Roman Catholic Church.

In a mass at Augsburg, the Bavarian city where the early Lutherans attempted reconciliation with Rome, Pope John Paul II asked rhetorically whether it was not ''in accordance with God's unfathomable wisdom'' that religious schism and even war should have occurred, leading the church ''to reflect on and review its original values.'' He later joined an ecumenical service at Augsburg's cathedral, though some Protestant leaders refused to meet with him.

It was in 1530, at that cathedral, that Lutherans presented the Augsburg Confession, their basic creed, which declared theological unity with the Roman church while denying the Pope's primacy. The Catholics never accepted its formulations. Until the Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965, Roman Catholicism recognized no church but the Church of Rome, andregarded Protestants much as it did Moslems or Jews.

But John Paul said the Confession ''provided us with a reminder of how broad and firm the common foundations of our Christian faith still are.''

Still, if the Pope's five-day visit to West Germany had a theme, it was not ecumenicism but rather the Catholic Church under Nazism. He spoke repeatedly of Catholic resisters, and he beatified a Jewish-born nun, Edith Stein, who was killed at Auschwitz. He reportedly told Jewish leaders that the church hierarchy had done too little to help the Jews, but he did not say this publicly.